


Wrong For Me

by NeverwinterThistle



Category: John Wick (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Santino Shows Up At Helen's Funeral, Animal Death, Ex Sex, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:20:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21633553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverwinterThistle/pseuds/NeverwinterThistle
Summary: “I’m sorry for your loss,” Santino says eventually. Rain dusts the shoulders of his elegant jacket. “Truly. This is not what I wanted for you.”
Relationships: Santino D'Antonio/John Wick
Comments: 9
Kudos: 279
Collections: 300bpm Flash Exchange November 2019





	Wrong For Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [track_04](https://archiveofourown.org/users/track_04/gifts).



The wet black umbrellas glisten like carapaces; in the distance, skyscrapers stand higher than the tombstones. Rainy haze makes it hard to tell where graveyard gives way to city filth. The priest blesses air that smells faintly of car exhaust and bruised white flowers. Mud sloshes wetly under well-shined black shoes, dripping on hired suits, bedraggled ribbons, Helen’s friends and family, and John’s, the uninvited.

Marcus keeps to a sniper’s distance, sighting down between the lines of graves and the maple leaves. The Camorra have taken the entrance. They shouldn’t be here. They have no right, and they know it; not one of the well-dressed threats crosses the border into the graveyard.

No one else came. They all knew better. John buries his wife surrounded by strangers.

He’s the last to leave. People move on, talking in murmurs, but Helen’s parents have a key to the house; they can let the guests in if John runs a few minutes late, and no one could blame him for it. From the corner of his eye, he sees the silent crowd at the entrance step back to let Helen’s people through. No trouble. There won’t be. Not at a funeral, and not with anyone other than John.

His shoes sink into the mud. A lone white ribbon comes loose from its wreath, sagging heavy with rainwater, greying irretrievably. John picks it up. He tucks it back into place among the flowers. And then he turns his back on the grave, gives Marcus a nod across the space between them, and trudges towards the exit.

The Italians break away one by one as John approaches; he’s in no hurry, but he has to pass if he wants to leave, and he very badly wants that. He watches the sombre group dissipate until he’s at the gates and one man stands between him and the real world. John stops in front of him.

He doesn’t know what to say. They were never meant to see each other again. But Helen was never mean to die young; she did that, with or without his consent. Some choices will never be John’s to make.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Santino says eventually. Rain dusts the shoulders of his elegant jacket. “Truly. This is not what I wanted for you.”

“Why are you here?”

“I was afraid you would be alone.” Santino’s eyes flicker over John’s shoulder, where no doubt Marcus has him fixed with the sniper’s unblinking gaze and inheld breath, languid like slow-acting poison. It doesn’t seem to worry him. It wouldn’t. John never worried him either. “But it was not the case. Still, it was good to come here, I think. Good to see you.”

“And you,” John says, meaning it as much as he can in the moment. So few things make sense to him anymore, but some forms of symbolism are carved into his marrow, and he understands what it means that Santino stands in front of him alone. Respect is not a currency he trades in anymore. But he remembers its value. “Thank you. For remembering me-” _in my time of need_ is not something he can say, true though it is. He needs a lot of things. He doesn’t think he’ll be getting a single one. Not from this man.

“Always, John,” Santino says quietly. “Apologies for the guards; I was not sure if we should expect other familiar faces. Perhaps less welcome ones.”

“No one attacks a funeral.”

“Times change.” There’s something closed to Santino’s expression. A shadow beneath the one thrown across his face by the black umbrella; it’s in his eyes, something heavy he’s not admitting to. A very specific exhaustion; a bewilderment, detachment, a grappling against a wet glass wall. A thing outside his comprehension, which he is trying to comprehend.

John thinks he might understand.

“Who?” he asks simply.

“My father.”

It’s been five years since John last spoke Italian, but this is a platitude he once used with significant frequency. “ _Le mie più sentite condoglianze._ ”

Santino shrugs. “It was a bad death. He did not go well. I am glad you did not see him, at the end; you would not have recognised that man. I barely recognised him myself.” The tightening in his jaw suggests that he’s said more than he meant to, and more than he should have done to a man he hasn’t seen in years. But he’s always maintained that John is easy to talk to. And John has always maintained that Santino is a rare kind of crazy seldom found elsewhere, thank god.

They weren’t supposed to meet again. But it’s good to see him anyway.

“I have to go,” John says. “The guests are coming back to…mine.”

“Ah,” Santino says. Brief humour tugs at the corners of his lips. “John Wick, that famous host. Always the life of the party.”

“I had no choice. It’s expected.”

“And you have no idea how to manage this expectation,” Santino says with an affection older than the time they’ve been apart. “I know you. Do you need help?”

He does. But like everything else, it’s not something he can ask for. “You don’t have to do that.”

“No,” Santino agrees. “But why not? I have spent the past month entertaining near strangers at a deathbed, and then a funeral. I understand how it goes.”

“People will want to know who you are.”

“An old friend, John,” Santino says. “What else is there to say?” He offers a hand, the rain speckling his knuckles, beading on the gold of his rings. John takes it. And maybe it’s the chill in the air, the raindrops that seep into his clothes, or maybe he’s just forgotten how warm Santino’s skin feels. It comes as a shock either way. John is not the one to pull back first.

“Come,” Santino says. He takes John by the shoulder, guiding him out through the graveyard gates, out into a world that will never truly let him rest.

*

Helen’s guests love Santino. Or they love the face he presents like a carnival mask, remarkable, spectacular among the drab black and hushed conversations, the brief and guilty laughter. None of them know John. He’s the loner, Helen’s quiet plus one at parties, pleasant but distant. No past he wants to talk about. No memories he wants to share. No friends of his own that anyone knows, until they meet Santino.

It’s an act. A trick, an eye-catching flicker of light like a decoy to draw attention while a target escapes to the darkness. John says his piece, says his platitudes, says very little. And then escapes to the shadow at Santino’s shoulder, and lets him distract the guests.

 _An old friend of John’s_ , he calls himself.

It’s not the whole truth. But it’s the closest he comes to honesty all evening; the rest is artful, tactful avoidance, redirection, more platitudes. They sound a lot better when Santino says them.

_I was sorry to hear of Helen’s passing. She was a wonderful woman. Such life._

He never met her. He can’t possibly know. But he stands in John’s living room in black suit and tie, shaking hands and lying with such grace that John can’t help but feel a stab of gratitude among the resentment. It’s not right, but it frees him. Gives him time to breathe. Time to drift to the window where the rain slips past, dreamlike and surreal, and Santino wards off the voices of strangers.

_It was a shock to everyone, and John most of all. Thank you for your concern. We’ll let you know if we need anything._

Not a single person in the room knows him, but the night ends and they all believe that they do. It’s a blessing; with Santino at John’s side, no one feels obligated to offer to stay. Sleep on his couch, keep him company, keep him _busy_. They trust he’s in good hands.

John once saw Santino touch an injured man; rival clan, crossing a line, crimes nonspecific. Tattoos like tapestry around his forearms. They burned him with the metal blades of stilletoes, heated on candles, until his ink sloughed off with his skin like the tears from his cheeks and the answers to all the questions Santino threw at him. It was a long night, that one. Repetitive. Hot. Messy. Afterwards, Santino pressed two fingers into the worst of the burns, dug down into blistering flesh and asked the man for an apology for the time they wasted breaking him.

Now he shakes hands with Helen’s parents and says he’s glad to meet them. It’s the same tone he uses in Continental lounges and dingy back alleys in Naples. Business dealings. He smiles, and something in John’s stomach twists sickly.

It doesn’t matter. He’s retired. He left all that behind.

“You can come back now,” Santino says at John’s front door, watching the last car reverse down the driveway. There’ll be another arriving in a few minutes; his bodyguards, come to return him to the hell he only briefly left to run itself. “It’s finished.”

John stands at his side, one hand on the door frame. It takes his weight. He wouldn’t stand without it. “I didn’t go anywhere.”

Santino glances at him. “Yeah, you did.”

It’s hard to argue when he’s right.

“Thank you,” John says, heavy with exhaustion. Every word drains him; he feels dried up, cracking like a desert in drought. He’s not sure he could have handled the evening alone. It was bad, but not unendurable. Easier for having someone bright to outshine him, casting shadows for him to sink into. Better than it could have been. A mercy he didn’t deserve.

Santino accepts his gratitude with a nod. “It was an honour. You have a beautiful home, John; thank you for sharing it with me.”

Headlights wind up the driveway, a convoy of three. Guards, armed, ostentatious in overlarge vehicles and tinted windows, bulletproofing, guns under suit jackets. But they stay in the cars. Respect, again. Stepping out would be insulting to John and embarrassing to Santino.

John thinks all of these things and then tries to forget. It’s not his world. Not his problem. He hasn’t cared for five years; he cares even less now.

“ _Buonasera,_ John,” Santino says quietly. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

John hasn’t given him a number. “Don’t.”

“Someone should. Now is not a good time to be alone with your thoughts.”

“I’ll hang up,” John says. He doesn’t mean it. They both know he doesn’t; he shakes Santino’s hand for a second time that day, in the doorway with the headlights from the mob cars half-blinding him. Santino’s skin is still too warm. He doesn’t move to kiss John’s cheeks. That’s a relief. And it’s not.

The house feels safer without him, but emptier too. Like an open cage in a zoo; missing, one tiger. John locks up and tries to calm his heartbeat.

And then there’s a knock on the door.

Daisy arrives.

*

There’s an orange haze in the air; dust, pollution, fumes from the planes that take off and land on the runways nearby. John has his own space. Private hangar, private length of asphalt, security guard that knows him on sight and lets him in at a glance. He only blinks when John passes Daisy through the window for him to mind. But he’s seen stranger. The puppy curls up in his passenger seat and he goes back to the book that interests him more than whatever stunt John’s pulling this time.

John drives. He sets his tyres to the runway and takes aim at a line of parked trucks, again and again, narrowing down the distance before the brakes come in to save him. It would only take one mistake. One slip. One miscalculation. There’s no one waiting for him at home anymore; no compass to show him true north.

He slides the car to a halt bare inches away from the grille on one of the trucks, and shuts off the engine. Leaning his head against the steering wheel, John breathes. His heart pounds loud enough to fill the sudden silence. He’s cutting it close. He knows that. The ground is wet and he could be more careful.

John gets out of the car, closing the door gently behind him. He steps up close to the grille of the truck, measuring the gap between the front of his car and the end of his life. It really is inches. Not a fraction of a second in it. But he’s too good to make a mistake here. If he slips, it’ll be because he wants to. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t. Not today.

Daisy’s waiting, back in the guard’s car. Probably hungry by now. Probably bored. Needs to be fed and walked and shown her new bed. The house needs cleaning. There are things John needs to do. But he’s still on-edge, feeling impulsive, contemplating another run at the parked trucks, another few black marks on his record and the asphalt under his tyres. Inject more adrenaline into the addict. And the addict wants it bad.

His phone starts ringing.

No one calls him these days. Only Helen called him before. John picks up.

“Hi.”

“ _Ciao,_ John.”

He doesn’t respond. Not out of shock; a part of him was expecting it. A smaller part was hoping. But he won’t let either of those things be the deciding factor here; he’s not what he used to be, and he’s learned how to restrain himself. He’s better than he was.

“Are you going to hang up on me, or do I keep talking?” Santino’s tone is light, artificially carefree. The fact that he’s calling at all speaks for him.

“I’m still here,” John says. “For now.”

“We didn’t have much chance to catch up yesterday,” Santino says. “Maybe that’s for the best; I thought so at the time, but now I’m not sure. I’d like to talk in person. If you’re willing, of course.”

A strange thought occurs. “Are you checking up on me? _You_?”

“Why not?”

“You don’t do that.”

“No,” Santino agrees. “But I have broken rules for you before. Why not again?”

Why not indeed. It’s been a while; five years and change since Santino broke rules for him, though they both swore it would be the last time. John wonders how it is that he actually believed in that promise. It really was too good to be true.

“I can’t enter Camorra territory,” he says. He’s trying to reason with one of them, though he’s not sure which. “Or the Continental. People see us talking, they’re going to make assumptions. And I’m not coming back.”

“Have I asked you to?”

No, he hasn’t. Not in so many words. But that will come with time and familiarity, once he decides John is relaxing in his presence. Calm the wolf. Slip a collar over his head while he sleeps. Own him. Santino’s wants aren’t subtle.

“Your home is neutral ground,” Santino says easily into the silence. He’s always been good at filling the spaces between John’s sparse conversation. “And I liked it; I regret that I did not see the garden last night. You could give me a tour. We could talk.”

“Or I could hang up.”

“You won’t.”

It’s tempting to do it out of spite. John comes close; he grips the phone tight against his ear, looks out over the damp asphalt, the hot metal of the Mustang’s roof, blues skies and stink of petrol. He tells himself to do it. Santino won’t call back. He doesn’t do second chances, except when he does them for John. But John is long past a second chance. He’s lost count of how many this man has given him, whether he asked for them or not.

“I’m free this evening,” he says at last. “Late. Not for dinner. Just a drink, and then you leave.”

“What a pleasure,” Santino says. If the insult stings, he’s choosing to ignore it. “I remember you preferred bourbon, but if one drink is the offer, you will forgive me for bringing something I enjoy. _A presto,_ John.”

He hangs up before John can do it for him.

John gets back in his car, fires up the engine, and lines himself back up for another run at the trucks.

*

It’s a warm night; last of the season, probably, and the trees in the yard are losing leaves with every gentle gust of wind. He needs to rake the lawn. Tomorrow, he will.

“So quiet,” Santino says. “I can’t decide if it suits you or not. This place.”

“I’ve been here a while. It suits me.”

“Some aspects of you, maybe. But the John Wick I knew would have lost his mind. What happened to that man, I wonder?”

“Buried him in the basement,” John says. “Mostly.” Not entirely, as much as he tried. But if he’d been that successful at excising every aspect of his former self, they wouldn’t be here. He’d never have invited Santino into his home. Or out onto his porch, a bottle of red wine between them, watching Daisy chase leaves across the lawn.

“What happened to you?” he asks idly. He wants the answer too much to pretend it doesn’t matter; he’s never liked mysteries. “After I left. You ever make peace with the Bowery King?”

Santino shrugs. He seems to find the question funny, though John asked it in earnest. “Of a kind. And only because I needed to direct my focus elsewhere; there may come a time when I decide to claim the territories he inhabits, of course. So much potential in those smuggling routes. I’m not convinced he puts them to their best use.”

“I’m guessing diplomacy is out of the question.”

“I have tried to kill him twice,” Santino says easily. “And he had the nerve to return the favour.”

“Good for him.”

“It makes diplomacy unlikely.”

“I bet. How’s Gianna?”

“Ah,” Santino says. “There, I have sad news. Although it pains me greatly to say it, she is still alive and well.”

John finds himself laughing before he can stop himself. It doesn’t last; with him, it rarely does. But the fact that it happens at all is just short of a miracle.

“Tell her I said hi,” he says, and stares down Santino’s tight smile.

“No, John. I’m not going to do that.”

The wine is good. Of course it is; Santino brought it, and whatever else people might criticise about Santino, his taste in wine is never in question. Even John appreciates it. Heavy and lingering, earthen on his tongue. It’s something to focus on that isn’t the obvious.

“What about the high table seat?” he asks without much interest.

“I don’t know yet,” Santino says. “I fly back to Napoli in the morning, for the reading of my father’s will.”

“He’ll leave it to Gianna.”

This time, Santino is the one laughing; a startled sound, half outrage and half affection. “John, my god. The things you say. No one else would dare, but you always say exactly what you think. I missed that about you.” He’s offended, that much is clear. But not too much, and even through the anger there’s amusement. He still has a beautiful laugh.

They slip into silence after that; Santino turns his glass of wine in his fingers, the remnants of laughter lingering in the corners of his lips. He’s considering what John said to him. John gives him the time to do it.

He really doesn’t care about the outcome of the D’Antonio will. The war for the throne is an old thing, begun even before he met the family and got attached in all the ways people like him should know not to. It’s not his problem. So far above his paygrade he can only just glimpse the underside, and that is an ugly thing indeed.

“You are right,” Santino says eventually. “No one other than Gianna says it out loud, but you are right. The seat is hers. And no matter what I did, or what I might do, the opportunity will pass me by. I am still her heir of course; she doesn’t have children. But she will live to a ripe old age to spite me unless I kill her first. It is the way of things.”

“I’m not doing it.” John watches his dog bat a yellowed leaf across the lawn, snapping at its shadow. The whole garden sits in growing darkness, the glow from the lights indoors pooling out in front of him, the sun setting low. But the air is still warm and the company still pleasant enough. He doesn’t yet feel like returning to solitude, or loneliness.

As sharp as the edges to this conversation are, they haven’t cut him. He will not kill Santino’s sister; that’s all there is to it. Where they go to from here is Santino’s choice.

“I know, John,” Santino says, with a patience rare to him. “Do you remember the night of your impossible task? I made you a promise.”

“I remember.”

“And I will continue to keep it. Stay retired, and the marker does not exist. There are no debts between us; the man you are now could not fulfil them, and I am not enough of a monster to ask that he try.”

Daisy comes darting across the lawn towards them, scared by the flick of her own tail, or her shadow on the leaves. They confuse her, these two men she barely knows. She hasn’t learned who to look for. Santino flicks his fingers at her and she nuzzles his hand.

“ _Ma come sei bella_ ,” he murmurs to her. “I am sure John spoils you. I would.”

He’s always liked dogs, John remembers. They both have.

“I never understood how the marker works,” he admits. Maybe it’s the wine, or care with which Santino strokes the little dog’s fur. Something makes him more trusting than he would have been the last time they met.

“I know,” Santino tells him. “I would have explained if you asked, but you never did.”

“I needed to get out. You knew that.”

“Yeah. And a marker is not a complicated thing. I help you, you help me. But as I promised you that night: stay retired, and our pact is void. As long as you never lift a gun, a knife, a…pencil to harm another, you are safe from the things I would ask you to do. Safe from me.”

John watches him. There’s no deception there; a touch of bitterness, maybe, a touch of regret. Santino’s help didn’t come easily. Asking for it cost as much as giving it must have, and both only happened when there were no other options left. The promise that came afterwards was something else. A gift; the marker, a transaction. Anyone can exchange a marker. A promise that renders it pointless, though? That would be insanity.

John is aware of what Santino wants from him, here and now. An offering. A gift of his own, to repay five years of silence. _You helped me, now I’ll help you, voluntarily_. _Let me give back some of my happiness_.

The thought doesn’t interest him.

“You could let her live,” he says. “Just…let her be. Find some kind of peace.”

“No,” Santino says. “You know who I am. There will never be peace as long as she rules, and I ask myself constantly if I might do it better.”

“You’d do it differently. Maybe not better.”

“Sometimes,” Santino says irritably, “I wish you would lie to me like everyone else. But you were always like this, weren’t you? If you spoke at all, you spoke your mind. And your mind was often cruel.”

John sighs. “You’re here because you want me to kill your sister. I’m not the cruel one.”

“I do want you to kill her,” Santino agrees. “Because I would trust no one else; only the Boogeyman could. But I have not asked you to do it. I will not ask you while you remain retired. And it is not the reason I am here.”

“Then why?”

Santino watches him. He has unnerving eyes; pale, changing colour with the shifting light of evening. Always a difficult man to stare down. John is out of practice.

“I’m not sure,” Santino says. “I could say that it is because I missed you; that would not be a lie. I have missed you, truly. Or I could tell you that I am here because you and I are both in pain, and it seems fitting that we should help each other. Or another reason, maybe. What would you like to hear?”

“The truth.”

“It’s not that simple. There is never a single reason for anything.” Santino turns away, the weight of his gaze lifting like a stone from John’s chest, letting him breathe. “I had a few days free before the will was read, and I wanted to see you. I don’t know why.”

He’s probably lying. John finds he doesn’t care too much. The reasons amount to the same, simple thing: he’s still glad to see Santino. It wouldn’t have been a good evening to spend alone. And however far he ran from the old world, however carefully he cut the ties that bound him-

It’s nice to be checked on by people he remembers liking. He doesn’t deserve it. But he appreciates it anyway.

“Tell me what I missed,” he says at last, letting himself sink back into the chair. When Santino reaches for the bottle of wine, wordlessly pouring them both a second glass, John accepts it with a nod. They toast each other. It’s easy. “Not the deaths. Other things.”

Santino sips his wine, watching moths congregate to flutter around the porch lights. He looks utterly without care. Relaxed in a simple white shirt, sleeves rolled to his elbows, playing at tranquillity.

The gun he brought with him sits back inside the house, placed casually under the coat he draped over a side table in the entryway. John pretended not to see it. Only now does he really let himself feel the weight of that gesture. Respect, again. A gun set aside with the safety left on. A dangerous man doing him the courtesy of disarming. That means something.

“Winston still has the New York Continental,” Santino says. “Rome is the same as always; no one will move Julius from his position. I would kill anyone that tried. But Morocco has seen changes. Your old friend Sofia has done well for herself. But you wouldn’t know that story, would you?”

“No. Tell me.”

The last of the daylight fades, and Daisy wanders over to curl up under Santino’s chair. The wine is still good; the silence briefly held at bay, and the air a little warmer with Santino’s voice in it.

John leans in to listen.

It gets late. Maybe not by their standards; not for men who have passed long, hot nights in stuffy rooms that smell like blood and ambition, cutting enemies down to size, cutting kingdoms down to pieces. The night was done when the dawn came or the enemy broke. Whichever first. By those standards, it’s early hours. But John’s grown slow. Grown tired. He stretches and the bones in his neck click. The sound makes Santino smile.

“How time flies,” he says. “I’m not sure where the hours went. Vanished like the years we were apart.”

There are no set rules for hosting a crime lord alone in the middle of the night, free of guards or soldiers, one firearm left at the door and the others buried under a concrete coffin in the basement. It’s not even a hostage situation; that, at least, John would know how to handle. He doesn’t have rules for this. But he’s always been good at improvising.

“You can stay, if you want,” John says. “But you’re sleeping on the couch.”

Something hot and furious flickers in Santino’s eyes. _No_ one gets that kind of leeway. In the currency of respect, this is a slap to the face.

But however high his hackles rise, he’s always liked that kind of thing.

He stays.

*

The couch sinks underneath them, too soft for the weight and the need they put into it. There’s a cushion bunched uncomfortably behind John's shoulders. A man between his thighs and heavy on his chest, a silhouette he knows like a recurring nightmare. John digs his nails into the small of Santino’s back. Drags one hand up his skin and the unyielding swell of his vertebrae, a spine he could snap with a twist.

Santino leaves no marks on John’s unbroken skin. His teeth linger on John’s upper arms instead, digging sharply into the ugly black ink he hates almost as much as John does, though for vastly different reasons. He’d tear the tattoos off if he could. Burn them, cut them, carve them away. John drags a heel up Santino’s legs. His head thuds back against the couch to let Santino mouth at his throat, weigh him down and fuck him just a little bit deeper. After five years, John _feels_ it. He'll feel it for days to come.

They don’t talk. It’s not the time. They’ve both run out of compromises.

John gives in, again and again, fingers bruising the sides of Santino’s hips with the force of how badly he wants to acquiesce. He’s done. He surrenders. On his tongue he tastes the wine from Santino’s glass, and the bitterness of a vendetta unsatisfied. He grits his teeth around both and rides out the unrelenting rhythm of rage. Of remembering. Of all the needs they fulfilled in each other, and the ones they did not.

He makes no sound when he comes; just arches, shivering, nails biting deep. Santino fucks him through it and doesn’t stop until they’re both done.

Afterwards, John leaves him on the couch. Returns alone to his bedroom, a shrine he won’t desecrate, a relic he won’t see tarnished. Sleep comes without peace, but also without guilt. And it comes a little faster than it did the night before.

*

There are three strangers in John’s living room. John is bleeding on the floor. Head wound; metal baseball bat to the scalp. Brutal, but efficient. In his half-concussed state he appreciates the irony: John Wick, who once killed three men with a pencil and a thousand more with a gun, now brought low by a bat to the skull. He can’t get up again. Five years of rust infest his machinery, and his body won’t move when he tells it to. All he’s capable of is the bleeding.

That, at least, he seems to be doing well.

The bat comes down again. He thinks they might have broken his elbow. It doesn’t hurt as much as watching them kill Daisy. And even that feels distant. They switch a light on, smearing John’s blood across the floorboards on the soles of their boots, smashing ceramics and Helen’s knickknacks, breaking glass. They’re looking for something.

 _Car keys_ , John catches in a stream of oddly accented Russian, and something like laughter clots thickly in his windpipe.

So this is how it ends. Home invasion. He’ll be found dead a few days from now; a week, maybe, depending on how long it takes Helen’s parents to remember they should probably check on her husband. They’ll feel terrible when they find him. Blame themselves for the rest of their lives, because they’re good people. They don’t deserve the pain this will bring them.

One man shoves the couch back to check the coffee table for John’s keys.

Santino must have left in the night. Slipping out of John’s life, disappointed by the broken man he found in the place of the monster he was looking for. He wanted a snake; found instead a shed skin, slowly flaking away with the seasons. Of course he left. There’s nothing for him here.

Unless they killed him too. Santino D’Antonio, the brutal Camorra prince, quietly murdered in the home of an old friend he trusted, for the sake of a petty theft. That’s funny. John thinks about it in the interlude between a kick to the stomach and the boot that breaks his nose. It’s hilarious. What a stupid, undignified end for a man who takes such pride in appearances. Killed in the wake of grief-fucking his ex. He deserved a bit better than that. Not much better. But not that.

“ _I found the keys_ ,” someone says in Russian. John can’t move his head far enough to see which man it is.

A moment later, the body slumps into his line of sight, and John registers gunshots. His senses feel scrambled, out of sync, unreliable. There are flecks of blood on the walls, a couple as far up as the ceiling. He focuses on those; they don’t require him to move his aching neck. Blood and brain matter between his lighting fixtures, where they’ll be hell to clean up in the morning. He’d been hoping to rake the leaves outside. Box up some of Helen’s clothes. Take the dog for a run. But it looks like his plans will be changing, assuming he’s not dead by dawn. His ears are ringing unevenly.

Someone grabs him by the chin, fingers sticking to the blood in John’s beard. Tilts his head back, forcing John to open his eyes enough to squint into the light.

“Concussion?” Santino asks mildly.

The question takes a second to sink in, which is really all the answer John needs. “Yeah.”

“I can call a doctor. You’ve lived through worse.” Santino sits back on his haunches, a gun resting casually on one bare knee, pointed in John’s direction. He’s wearing a pair of briefs and nothing else; the living room lights wash him out unkindly. He tans in the Mediterranean sun, John remembers. He can’t have been home in a while.

“You told me you were still retired,” Santino says in a tone so polite it can only be threatening. His hand is loose on the gun, finger far enough from the trigger to suggest he’s still willing to listen. “And I believed you; I did not think that you would lie to my face.”

He’s not making any sense. There are three bodies on the floor of John’s living room; one of them is screaming softly, cradling what’s left of his kneecap. John’s ears aren’t ringing after all.

“I’m retired,” he says blankly. “I am. Still.”

Santino follows his gaze to the writhing man, rat-faced blond, straggly and no longer arrogant. “Really,” he says. “So why did I just shoot Viggo Tarasov’s son?”

Nothing is making sense. Not Santino, with a gun on one bare knee, his free hand roughly pushing John’s blood-matted hair out of his eyes. Not the Russians in his home, not _Viggo Tarasov’s_ son, who looks not one thing like the father. Not at all.

“I haven’t talked to Viggo in five years,” John says. “He wasn’t even at the…” _funeral_ isn’t a word he wants to utter, but his expression must speak for him. Santino nods slowly. The gun is shifted, muzzle no longer drawing a line to John’s chest.

“No,” he says. “You’re right. And why send his son to attack you, with only two guards? He knows you. The world knows what his son is. Even more of a disappointment to his father than I was to mine.” Finally, he sets the gun onto the floor at his side, leaning over to cup John’s jaw. Blood smears his hand; it won’t bother him. It never has before. “They killed your dog.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.” He actually is, a little. That’s strange. Santino cares about so few things that aren’t himself. But he’s sorry about the dog, and something about his expression is enough to clear the last of the haze from John’s head. He starts to understand what’s happened. What he’s lost. What he has no way of recovering.

With a hand on Santino’s shoulder, Santino’s arm around his waist, John stands. He’s aware that he shouldn’t be moving; his body screams louder than Viggo’s son on the floor, and for a moment his vision goes dark. He fights it away. But determination alone isn’t quite enough to keep him upright after five years of letting discipline slip; he ends up sitting on an arm of the couch, head bowed and fighting nausea. Blood drips from his broken nose. It lands in drops on his bare feet. He thinks he might be angry. It’s been so long, he barely recognises the feeling.

“Viggo only has one heir,” he says without expression. The young man on his living room floor seems to have gone into shock. Glassy-eyed, shivering. Shot a couple of times, it looks like. Non-lethal. He’ll never walk again. Might be in pain for the rest of his life.

Santino’s aim is as unforgiving as his sadistic streak, and the injuries won’t be an accident.

“Yeah,” Santino agrees. “A son, for all the good it has done him. He may thank us, in the end.”

“He won’t.”

The wise thing to do would be to call Viggo. Give back his crippled son and accept whatever apology payment he offers, so they can all move on as fast as possible. John doesn’t want grudges. No drawn-out vendetta, no rage the likes of which is making his hands shake as he grips the edge of the couch. He got out. He has to stay there. He has to let this slide.

Santino tugs a folded blanket from the couch and goes to drape it over poor Daisy. He makes no move to draw John’s attention to what he’s doing, but the act is purposeful, and the dog is dead. She’s not coming back. There are no second chances here.

John breathes slowly.

He takes the gun when Santino offers it to him, grip first, its weight a comfort to hands that have felt too empty for years.

“John,” Santino says. John looks at him. His expression is concerned, sympathetic. His eyes are like nothing human at all. “I’m getting you a glass of water and something to stop that bleeding. Stay here. I won’t be gone long. And if Iosef Tarasov is still alive when I return, I will kill him for you. Consider it a gift.” He lifts a hand to John’s face, rubbing a thumb over one cheekbone. It comes back red-smeared. There’s blood on his hands, John’s hands, pooling on the floor. Flecked across the walls and ceiling. John can feel it on his lips. He holds very still as Santino kisses him, just the once, hardly lingering. Just enough to taste the blood on John’s tongue.

“I’ll kill him for you,” Santino says again. “But maybe you want to do that for yourself. It’s your choice.”

He slips from the room, quiet on the wooden floorboards, almost naked and unconcerned. More comfortable in John’s home than John is. As if the outcome of this is…meaningless.

He leaves John alone with a loaded gun, a dead dog, and a choice.

And John is angry.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 300bpm flash exchange (round 2). The song prompt was:  
> [Perfectly Wrong](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZzGontuNIQ) \- Shawn Mendes


End file.
